Analysis of Physical Activity as an Environmental Risk Factor for Motor Neurone Disease (MND)

在运动神经元疾病(MND)中，神经系统的损伤会导致进行性肢体无力以及言语、吞咽和最终呼吸困难。MND的病因尚不清楚，也没有有效的治疗方法。可悲的是，MND患者通常在症状出现后3年内死亡。对体育活动(PA)作为MND风险因素的兴趣源于职业运动者可能比预期更频繁地患MND的建议。因此，我们计划进行一项研究，以调查MND患者是否比健康志愿者更有可能在过去服用高水平的PA。我们建议使用我们设计的问卷采访患者和志愿者，该问卷衡量了PA在一个人成年后的整个生活中的表现。我们将分析收集到的数据，以确定是否存在关联。我们假设PA只在一小部分遗传易感个体中是MND的危险因素，通过确定这种联系，我们将深入了解PA的这种异常生物学反应。我们希望，通过提高我们对与这种疾病相关的环境和遗传相互作用因素的理解，这些结果最终将有助于开发新的MND治疗方法。

In motor neurone disease (MND), damage to the nervous system causes progressive limb weakness and difficulty with speech, swallowing and ultimately breathing. The cause of MND is unknown and there are no effective treatments. Sadly, patients with MND usually die within 3 years of symptom onset. Interest in physical activity (PA) as a risk factor for MND arose from suggestions that professional sports people may develop MND more often than is expected. Therefore, we plan to perform a study to investigate if MND patients are more likely to have undertaken high levels of PA in the past compared to healthy volunteers. We propose to interview patients and volunteers using a questionnaire we have designed which measures the PA performed throughout a person‘s adult life. We will analyse the data collected to determine if an association does exist. We hypothesise that PA is a risk factor for MND in only a proportion of genetically susceptible individuals and by determining this association we will gain insight into this abnormal biological response to PA. We hope the results will ultimately contribute to the development of new MND treatments by improving our understanding of the environmental and genetic interacting factors associated with this disease.